(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 9 March 2001 RSF press release: Journalist released after two-and-a-half years in prison Journalist Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, 44 year-old Holguín correspondent for the independent news agency Cuba Press, was released on 26 February 2001. Reporters sans frontières (RSF) is delighted for the journalist, but notes that he should […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 9 March 2001 RSF press release:
Journalist released after two-and-a-half years in prison
Journalist Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, 44 year-old Holguín correspondent for the independent news agency Cuba Press, was released on 26 February 2001. Reporters sans frontières (RSF) is delighted for the journalist, but notes that he should never have been imprisoned. RSF also asks the Cuban authorities to release the last journalist still jailed on the island, Bernardo Arévalo Padron, who could, in principle, be conditionally released, since he has served half his sentence.
Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, correspondent for the Cuba Press agency in Holguín (east of the island), was arrested on 1 October 1998 and sentenced on 6 May 1999 to thirty-one months in prison for “insulting” Fidel Castro, in accordance with Article 144 of the Penal Code. During an altercation provoked by the police, he held the head of state personally responsible for the harassment he had suffered. Jailed in the Holguín provincial prison, the journalist was transferred on 30 June 1999 to the high security (“máximo rigor”) prison in the same city, known as the “cemetery of the living”. On 3 March 2000, he was returned to the provincial prison. On 26 June 2000, Manuel Antonio González Castellanos was beaten by Captain Narciso Ramírez Caballero and put in solitary confinement for ten days after protesting the confiscation of his personal documents. He suffers from an umbilical hernia, for which he refused an operation in prison, and respiratory problems. Manuel Antonio González Castellanos announced that he would continue his work as an independent journalist at the Cuba Press agency.
One journalist is still imprisoned in Cuba: Bernardo Arévalo Padron, founder of the independent news agency Linea Sur Press, sentenced to six years in prison in November 1997 for “insulting” the head of state. He has been eligible for a conditional release since October 2000.
In Cuba, where the Constitution stipulates that press freedom must “conform to the objectives of a socialist society”, only the official press is authorised. In this context, some 100 independent journalists, grouped into about twenty news agencies that are not recognised by the authorities, continue to be subject to pressure. Pushed to the limit, eighteen of them chose the path of exile in 2000. RSF calls for an end to the harassment of these journalists and the official recognition of independent agencies.
